There are a number of existing alarm panels for a security system, which either use a cellular communication arrangement as their primary or secondary communication to report alarm conditions detected by the alarm panel to a monitoring station. Cellular backup is advantageous as the equipment is designed to operate on batteries and it can provide communication in situations where conventional land lines are not always reliable. For the above reasons and others, a cellular backup arrangement has proven quite popular.
Cellular systems in general have been prone to fraudulent activities where transmissions are monitored and analyzed to extract information from the signal which information is used to complete unauthorized cellular transmissions. Basically, the signals are analyzed to identify the cellular address and codes which can then be incorporated in a fraudulent cellular device and used for a certain period of time before discovery. It is often possible to place fraudulent communications costing in excess of $20,000.00 before discovery.
Alarm panels with cellular backup are even more prone to monitoring as their location is fixed and thus, monitoring is extremely easy. Therefore, although cellular backup provides a desirable advantage, it also has certain disadvantages. These disadvantages are associated with the analog cellular systems and the accepted operations standard of the AMPS system for cellular communication.
According to the accepted AMPS standard, a cellular device operates in either a power off mode, an active mode or a standby mode. During the power off mode, the transmitter and the receiver of the cellular device is off. During the active mode and the standby mode, the receiver and transmitter are both active and the cellular device upon being powered, registers with a cell site and responds to received query signals from the cell site. These communications are conventional cellular communication to the cell site and could be monitored. Thus, using the accepted AMPS protocol, there are a number of ongoing transmissions between the cellular device and the cell site which can be fraudulently monitored for theft of the cellular authorization parameters. To overcome these problems, the alarm panel maintains the cellular capability thereof in the power off mode. Unfortunately, this does not provide for a high degree of confidence that the cellular capability would be available if needed.
The present invention seeks to overcome these disadvantages while providing an assessment of the availability of the cellular communication arrangement.